Interesting Common Gull (December 2014, Scotland). (1 Viewer)

[Stonefaction]

I was looking through some of my old photos and came across what I thought was an interesting looking Common Gull. I eventually managed to find that I'd taken the photo on 7th December 2014, at Monifieth, on the east coast of Scotland. There has been some discussion on Twitter about the possibility of Heinei race Common Gulls birds turning up in the UK. One of the features to look for mentioned is the unstreaked head in winter, which this bird (almost) has - though there is some faint streaking just visible. However, some of the other features do appear to be more like Canus. I suspect that it won't be anything too special, but I'd rather get an opinion from folk who know gulls ruling out the possibility, rather than wondering about it and trying to reach a decision myself. Unfortunately, I only have the one photo (as although it looked quite striking my knowledge of gull subspecies didn't go any deeper than the possibility of Argentatus Herring Gulls being a possibility locally, even if I couldn't tell them and Argenteus apart).

 

[Alexander Stöhr]

Hello,

thank you for this interesting bird. It has uniform dark greater coverts, but I see a dirty cast to the pinkish bill and a few streaks at the undertail-coverts. But thats the question, I agree with you: how good must a Common Gull look, that it can be identified with confidence as heinei in western Europe?

I hope for smiths, Lou, Dean Nicholson, Steve Clifton and others to jump in. As you know, I am very interested in this topic.

​

I hope you have more pictures, showing the tail and der underwing.

Is it possible to post a link to the discussion on Twitter here?

 

[Stonefaction]

Alexander, there is no discussion on twitter (I posted there but no-one commented), and no more photos unfortunately - which might hinder a 100% firm ID. I suspect that it will just be a Canus, but knowing that there are some proper gull experts on here, I figured this would be the best place to find out why it is what it is, whatever it is. I still haven't got my head around the larger gulls (despite buying all the gull books) but gulls are something I want to get 'good' at.

 

[KenM]

Alexander, there is no discussion on twitter (I posted there but no-one commented), and no more photos unfortunately - which might hinder a 100% firm ID. I suspect that it will just be a Canus, but knowing that there are some proper gull experts on here, I figured this would be the best place to find out why it is what it is, whatever it is. I still haven't got my head around the larger gulls (despite buying all the gull books) but gulls are something I want to get 'good' at.

I suspect Stonefaction, that the apparent lack of response, is probably down to the general apathy/frustration felt towards Larus, being in no small part due to the many phases of ageing to swot up on, not to mention hybridisation, particularly with the “larger”gulls, that can make the group appear somewhat difficult.

However that said, I believe a lot of birders including myself are now waking up to the challenge and are becoming more interested in them as a group, onwards and upwards into the Larus “mists” of time….you certainly won’t be alone, I can assure you.👍

 

[Stonefaction]

The new recently published Gulls book is almost the book I was hoping it would be. I think I'd like an app where similar poses of multiple differing species, or wings etc could be compared side by side (next to my photo(s)). The book does allow this to some degree but still requires lots of flicking back and forwards if you want to compare more than the most likely similar birds. I'd like to be able to see a layout with (for example) all the large 'Herring-type' gulls together, so the gradual differences can easily be seen. One of the older books does this with wingtip patterns and some of the gull websites go part-way to achieving this. I'm very slowly getting better with gulls though an almost complete lack of Caspians/Yellow Leggeds up here is greatly hindering the learning process 'in the field'.

 

[Stonefaction]

Hunting around I found this possible heinei and it does look to my rather untrained eye to be quite similar....

Gull Research Organisation

This website deals with the taxa canus & heinei. Comparison of plumage month by month.

gull-research.org

 

[Stonefaction]

Alexander and Ken, having posted the pic in the main ID thread to absolute silence and no replies I spoke to an experienced birder with an interest in that subspecies via Twitter about it. As expected it really needs a view of the underwing and the tail to be certain but he agrees that it does look like a fairly decent shout for a candidate Heinei - which was all that I was really needing confirmed. Now that I have that 'search image' in my head, I will hopefully have a better idea of what I'm hunting for in the field, next winter (or this).